With vine leaves in his hair.

[ “Last words,” responding to a nurse’s remark that he “seemed to be a little better” :] On the contrary.

Our common lust for life.

Always do that, wild ducks do. Go plunging right to the bottom . . . as deep as they can get . . . hold on with their beaks to the weeds and stuff—and all the other mess you find down there. Then they never come up again.

I love this town so much that I’d rather destroy it than see it prosper on a lie.

The party programs grab hold of every young and promising idea and wring its neck.

Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population—the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it’s the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it’s the fools that form the overwhelming majority. But I’ll be damned if that means it’s right that the fools should dominate the intelligent.

The life of a normally constituted truth is generally, say, about seventeen or eighteen years, at most twenty; rarely longer. But truths as elderly as that have always worn terribly thin. But it’s only then that the majority will have anything to do with them; then it will recommend them as wholesome food for thought. But there’s no great food-value in that sort of diet.

This meeting declares that it considers Dr. Thomas Stockmann, Medical Officer to the Baths, to be an enemy of the people.

The majority is never right.